


we all hit the ground the same

by HelixDoubleHelix



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Character Study, Gen, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 08:41:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13609692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelixDoubleHelix/pseuds/HelixDoubleHelix
Summary: "You left your past life behind for an adventure. You want it back."Stone breaks easily.





	we all hit the ground the same

When you were a kid you weren’t afraid of anything. There were men waiting on the corner to kidnap poor blind girls and unfamiliar places where your mother said you could get lost and you don’t care. Nothing scares you.

            The Avatar comes to town, stupid and light-footed with even stupider friends. You go with him anyway, because the alternative is staying at home, with your parents’ fear invading your head (“it’s too dangerous”) and making you crazy. The Avatar doesn’t care about your blindness, just that you can bend, that you can teach him. You tell him you will. You aren’t afraid.

            Until the Princess chases you.

            The Princess isn’t fooled by bravery.

            (You are afraid of everything.)

 

Sokka reminds you of yourself before you knew him. He talks a lot and doesn’t sleep very much. He never tells you but you know he’s covered himself in a layer of stone and anger so nobody can move him. Some days he seems like he’ll fall apart if you move wrong.

            It’s easy to fall apart. You do. Katara does. Aang learns that you let Appa go and breaks apart so badly he may never put himself back together.

            “It’s all your fault,” he screams at you later. He is so tired, like all of his past lives are landing on him now.

            (You left your past life behind for an adventure. You want it back.)

            Aang told you, once, that thinking like an Airbender was his problem. He is too gentle. He does not know how to be hard like stone.

            He rises into the air and destroys a fleet of ships, and he isn’t gentle anymore. You don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.

            Aang breaks down crying in Katara’s arms.

 

The world outside your home is scary, and you hate it. You hate how much smaller Aang—the all-powerful Avatar—seems with every passing day. You hate how furious you feel, like you want to kill the entire Fire Nation.

            The four of you stop a drill from destroying a city that doesn’t deserve to be saved. You forget how to sleep without listening for threats.

            “I will never turn my back on people who need me,” Katara says.

            Katara learns that she can kill with blood.

            The disgraced prince of the fire nation asks if he can help. Sokka makes the necessary jokes. You have the necessary reactions.

            Fire destroyed Aang’s entire race. He learns to firebend. Somehow he is okay with this.

            Sokka breaks his father out of prison. You miss your parents.

            Aang doesn’t want people to die.

            (You don’t think he has a choice.)

 

            The final battle comes closer. You are more afraid than ever. You know that you are not invincible, and the list of things that can hurt you never ends.

            ( _firewatersoldiersmetalstoneanimalsyourfriendsyourself)_

            Sokka is still fragile. Katara is still selfless. Aang is smaller than ever.

            Zuko will not call the Fire Lord his father. You are no stranger to hating your father, but you are a stranger to your father hating you back.

            There is a scar on your ankle that you can feel with your fingers. You don’t know where you got it, but you are not the only one with scars.

            There is a man who burned his own son who gets to live in a palace. Your friends are kind and brave. You hide from shadows in the woods.

            You all lay awake at night and pretend to think everyone else is asleep.

 

You are as prepared as you can be for the comet. It isn’t enough.

            While Katara goes with Zuko to kill his own sister, Aang goes to battle a soldier four times his age. You stand on a battleship and bend the whole thing in half, and feel your heart bend with it.

            You dangle from a deadly height, with no one to pull you up. There is so much you want to say and you don’t say any of it.

            Someone is crying. It might be you. You used to say you weren’t afraid of anything, but you are afraid to die.

            You don’t. Not yet.

            Aang shakes the earth when he destroys the Fire Lord. The earth isn’t stable.

            (Nothing is. You know that now.)

           

You leave the war the same as you joined it—all at once, without time to breathe.

            There is death everywhere now, in the world, in your head. When you go home your parents don’t know what to do. You raise walls in front of your bedroom door, and spin around at the slightest noise. You’ve forgotten what it’s like to be indoors.

            You have nowhere to go. Your friends are home. Together they can adjust, can hold each other in the night, but you are alone. Your parents treat you like a child. You feel a hundred years old.

            You leave again. You bury yourself into your work, into building a new city with friends who feel farther away every day.

            You are afraid of everything.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments water my crops. Give me a holler on tumblr at @buteojamaicensis.


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